La terapia con hadrones es una modalidad de tratamiento de cáncer con haces externos compuestos por núcleos ligeros. Presenta ciertas ventajas respecto a la más común radioterapia con fotones, en particular una menor irradiación a tejidos sanos, como consecuencia del rango finito de los componentes del haz dentro del paciente. No obstante, su implementación se ve limitada por la falta de un...
Proton therapy uses protons to irradiate tumors and the way they deposit energy, characterised by the well-known Bragg peak, allows to conform dose better than in traditional techniques. Accuracy is very important to reach the maximal potential of this technique, which currently cannot be achieved due to the existence of uncertainties in the calculation of the proton range. In-vivo dose...
Cancer is one of the leading causes of mortality world-wide, killing more than one million people per year just in Europe. Nowadays, proton therapy is one of the most promising techniques in the fight against cancer, being two the main bases of its success: (1) the physical advantages of protons with respect to conventional radiotherapy with photons, resulting in a more selective energy...
The IRIS group of IFIC (Valencia) has recently developed and characterized a new version of a three-layer Compton camera (CC) for hadron therapy monitoring, known as MACACO (Medical Applications CompAct COmpton camera). With the main purpose of improving the timing response of 25 ns of the current MACACO II, a new system, MACACO$_p$, has been assembled employing the novel TOFPET2 ASIC (PETsys,...
Flash radiotherapy (FLASH-RT) is a new delivery mode for radiation therapy using very high instantaneous dose rate with pulsed radiation beams. Even from around 1960 there were indications that the delivery of the ionizing radiation dose in ultra-short pulses could improve the therapeutic window respect to standard radiotherapy. During last years there is a growing interest in the clinical...
The Monte Carlo codes PENH, TOPAS and FLUKA have been used in this work to simulate proton dose distributions in materials of medical interest such as water, bone or titanium. It has been possible to verify the almost total agreement on crucial magnitudes such as the depth dose.
However, discrepancies have appeared in the multiple Coulomb scattering (MCS), that comes from the large number of...
En terapia hadrónica, la detección de partículas secundarias emitidas durante la irradiación puede ser utilizada para la verificación del tratamiento. En particular, la detección de prompt gamma -fotones de alta energía emitidos por los núcleos excitados por el haz- mediante cámaras Compton es una técnica con creciente interés. Con estos sistemas se pueden reconstruir imágenes de la...
La terapia hadrónica es una técnica de tratamiento del cáncer consistente en la irradiación de tumores con protones u otros iones ligeros. El uso de esta técnica se ha incrementado por su ventaja de maximización de la dosis depositada sobre un tumor y de reducción de toxicidad del tratamiento comparado con la radioterapia convencional. Sin embargo, una de sus desventajas es la dificultad en la...
Authors: A. Villa-Abaunza, P. Ibáñez, A. Espinosa and JM Udías
Introduction. As radiation research and cancer biology reach new horizons, the need for improved pre-clinical methodology has become paramount. In this work, we are interested in designing an x-ray based irradiator for small animals and cells, which is able to deliver a dose rate of 1 Gy/min. To do this, some measurements and...
We present a RayStation script to aid medical dosimetrists in preventing collisions between gantry head and patient or couch during treatment planning. The script, developed at Massachusetts General Hospital, imports 3D models of the treatment machine elements in STL format. These are visualized in the Patient Modelling tab together with the contoured patient surface. A graphical dialogue with...
La estimulación magnética transcraneal (TMS) es una técnica neurofisiológica que permite la inducción, de forma segura y no invasiva, de una corriente en el cerebro capaz de modular la actividad neuronal [1]. La TMS ocupa una posición privilegiada para la selección de las funciones cerebrales, gracias a la combinación de su resolución espacial y temporal [2].
Entre los protocolos clínicos...
Accurate Monte Carlo simulations play a major role in PET corrections and scanner design. We present the Ultra-fast Monte Carlo PET simulator (UMC-PET) developed for multiple purposes, an accurate, fast and flexible PET simulator. The UMC-PET includes all the relevant physics related to the emission, transport and detection of the radiation in a PET acquisition, such as positron range, scatter...